Torn Pages #2: Domesticity, Violence, and the Narrative of the Absurd: Juggalo Crime Fiction in the Early Twentieth Century

I found this PhD thesis in the back shelves of the University of California, Riverside library. The author is Norman “Ginger Ninja” Rubin. The copyright is listed as 1997. This is from page 207 (of 823 pages!)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Considerably less has been written about juggalo crime fiction from the first half of the century with most of the scholarly work focusing on the era following the end of World War II, commonly known as the Western Juggaissance. By only focusing on what is inarguably an important period in ninja letters, it ignores the more primitive work of later luminaries like Ridemy Nutz and Klown Town MurderBear, and forgotten pioneers of the genre Yakkety Axe, Carny Killa, and Sherwood Anderson.

For example, in the seminal 1917 juggalo gothic, Kastle Husslas by Faygo Syko, we see the first depiction of juggalos and jugalettes in the grand gothic tradition[1] — although there is some debate about whether Klown Ditch by I. B. Krazee-Asfuq predates Syko’s work in its adherence to the tropes of the sub-sub-genre. In Kastle Husslas, we are introduced to Baron Murda, young patriarch of the castle who must decide between the woman he should marry for duty and the juggalette (immortalized in the character of Juggs Von Banger) who is down to party in the mud and can seriously hang from tits to toes. It is easy to see the juxtaposition and dichotomy of the traditional paradigm upended, transformed, and transmographied to reimagine the role of juggalo in an everchanging society.

Setting the juggalo war poetry of Sergeant Homey aside for a moment, as it does not fit easily in the narrow genre limitations as crime fiction[2], but has enough mention of murder to warrant some kind of inclusion in the overall conversation, another prime example of pre-1920 J-fiction would have to be Dank Buttkrak’s haunting depiction of the horrors of trench fighting during World War I in the highly influential All Quiet on Fester’s Butt.

Serious consideration has to be given to the texts of juggalette women of letters, as well. Where mainstream publishing focused almost entirely on male authors, publishers like Needum Press, Klown Family Publishing Ltd., and the Finnish publisher Pelle Kusipaa Kustannustoiminta[3], had catalogs that were predominantly female. Kandy Floss, Murda Kitten, and Anais Ninja published thirty books in a three-year period, many of which outsold their male contemporaries. Escape From The Grasp of Some Fucking Asshole by Floss outsold the publisher’s combined output for 1922.

[1] There is some debate about whether Klown Ditch by I. B. Krazee-Asfuq predates Syko’s work in its adherence to the tropes of the sub-sub-genre, but most of those scholars are juffalo assholes.

[2] Sergeant Homey’s elegy “War is a Lot Like Fighting” is a particularly violent example, as it’s mostly about crossbow murdering.

[3] see Koskinen & Virtanen, pages 58–73